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47 Cards in this Set

work is a primary means to such ends as food shelter, clothing and health care

According to DesJardins, work is likely to be something controlled by others, and this fact highlights a real vulnerability. Explain.

Because work is likely to be something controlled by others, this opens the door for exploitation and for your interests, as an employee, to be set back

What are three senses of “employee rights”?

1) legal rights granted to employees on the basis of legislation or judicial ruling
2) good to which employees are entitled to on the basis of contractual agreements w/ employers
3) general moral entitlements that employees have to certain goods (or protection from certain harms) w/ in the workplace

What are three senses of the “right to work”?

1) right to work w/o being required to join a local union
2) right to a job
3) right, once hired, to hold that job w/ some degree of security (right to due process)

What are two justifications for the view that the right to work implies that employees have a right to a job?

1) Work is an expression of a meaningful life; work allows us to fulfill this life
2) work is a means to meet our basic human needs

The right, once hired, to hold that job with some degree of security is also referred to as the right to what?

The right to due process

What is an “at will” contract?

An “at will” contract is one that exists only so long as both parties consent or, conversely, can be broken at the discretion of either party

What are the implications of an “at will” contract for: (1) the employer and (2) the employee?

(1)Employers are free to terminate an employee at any time and for any reason; (2)employees are free to quite their job at any time and for any reason

According to DesJardins, if employment at will governs the workplace, then the concept of employee rights is, at least in the legal sense, meaningless. Explain.

With employment at will, employers are free to terminate an employee at any time and for any reason therefore the concept of employee rights are meaningless because a sense of employee rights is that employees have general moral entitlements to certain goods (or protection from certain harms, such as being fired).

What is the philosophical idea that underlies the legal concept of due process?

Even legitimate authority cannot be used in just any manner

According to DesJardins, due process rights would establish the procedures (the “process”) that an employer must go through to ensure that the dismissal is not arbitrary. What might such procedures involve?

Such procedures involve specifying the acceptable reasons for dismissal and establishing just cause conditions for dismissal

What are four counterarguments to the right of due process? (Name and describe.)

1)Argument from freedom
Freedom to vocalize and negotiate one’s needs
2)Argument from fairness
If the employee can leave at any time, then the employer should be able to fire an employee at any time
3)Argument from property rights
Employees are resources that can be disposed of
4)Argument from efficiency
Employees have no motivation to be efficient because employees cannot just be fired for any reason therefore they do not have as much motivation to be efficient as they would have with employment at will

What is an objection to the argument from fairness?

Employees are harmed more than employers are

What’s the difference between power and authority?

Power is the ability to impose one’s will on another;
Authority exists when that power is justified or legitimate

Define: Risk.

Probability of harm

Define: Relative risk.

Comparing the probabilities of harm involved in various acitivities

What are three problems with the approach to workplace health and safety issues of focusing on the relative risks faced by workers and the level of acceptable workplace risk?

1)Treats employees disrespectfully by ignoring their input
2)Assumes that healthy and safety are mere preferences that can be traded-off against competing values
3)Assumes an equivalence between workplace risks and other types of risks when there are significant difference between them

What are two general understandings of “privacy”?

1)privacy as a right to be “let alone” w/ in a personal zone of solitude
2)privacy as the right to control information about oneself

According to DesJardins, under what two conditions may employee privacy be violated?

1)employees infringe upon personal decisions that are irrelevant to the employment contract (implied or explicit)
2)whenever personal information that is irrelevant to that contract is collected, stored, or used w/o the informed consent of that employee

What are the four P’s of marketing?

Product, pricing, promotion, and placement

What is the goal of all marketing?

The sale, the eventual exchange between marketer and consumer

What are two important elements of product placement?

1)target marketing
2)marketing research

According to DesJardins, there are ethical and unethical ways of influencing others. What are three examples of the former, and three examples of the latter?

Involves working behind the scenes, guiding their behavior w/o their explicit consent or conscious understanding

On Kantian grounds, the case can be made that manipulating people is morally wrong. Explain.

When I manipulate someone I treat him or her as a means to my own ends, as an object to be used rather than as an autonomous person in his or her own right

DesJardins suggests two general guidelines for marketing practices. What are they?

1)Marketing practices that seek to discover which consumers might already and independently be predisposed to purchasing a product are ethically legitimate
2)Marketing practices that seek to identify populations that can be easily influence and manipulated are not ethically legitimate

What are two approaches to regulating deceptive marketing practices, and what are problems associated with each?

1) Targets those marketing practices that are intended to deceive
- need to determine the mental state of those who initiated the practice
- making judgment before the practice actually occurs
- punishing companies w/ the intent to manipulate, prior to the practice occurring
2) Emphasizes marketing practices that actually deceive
- too strong  consumers are deceived by many relatively trivial marketing practices
- too weak  places the burden on consumers to take the initiative and come forth to prove the deception

What is the “reasonable consumer” standard, and what are the strengths and weaknesses to adopting it?

The “reasonable consumer” standard is the idea that consumers are not assumed to be ignorant
- assumes the best about consumers and doesn’t hold marketers to extreme and difficult standards
- cost of this approach is that it does abandon protection to those consumers who may well deserve the greatest protection, namely, those most vulnerable and susceptible to deception

What is the “dependence effect,” and what are three unwelcome implications of it?

Dependence effect: consumer demand depended upon what producers had to sell
1)by creating wants, advertising was standing the law of supply and demand on its head
2)advertising and marketing tend to create irrational and trivial consumer wants and this distorts the entire economy
3)by creating consumer wants, advertising and other marketing practices were violating consumer autonomy

What is the difference between first-order and second-order desires?

first-order desire: those that I just happen to have at any given time
second-order desire: those that I have regarding first order desires

According to Dworkin, there are two conditions for autonomy. What are they?

1) Authenticity: the desire is not renounced or rejected by the person who has it
2) Independently Accepted: the desire must be such that the person who has it can critically reflect upon it

What does it mean to be “vulnerable”?

To be susceptible to harm (have one’s interests set back or defeated)

There are two general senses of vulnerability that are relevant for the discussion of target marketing. What are they?

1)a person is vulnerable as a consumer by being unable in some way to participate as a fully informed and voluntary participant in the market exchange
2)the harm is other than the financial harm of an unsatisfactory market exchange

The United States legal system recognizes two forms of sexual harassment. What are they?

1)quid pro quo harassment occurs when granting sexual favors is made a condition of employment,
2)hostile work environment occurs when a pattern of sexual harassment within the workplace prevents a woman from doing her job

Define: Equal opportunity.

The commitment to nondiscrimination in employment practices

Define: Affirmative action.

Refers to any positive step beyond equal opportunity and passive nondiscrimination taken to alleviated the harms of unjust discrimination

Define: Preferential treatment.

Employment practices that go beyond simple equal opportunity and affirmative action by granting preferences to members of underrepresented groups in hiring and promotion decisions.

According to DesJardins, the ethical basis for the assumption that equality is valuable can be found as a fundamental tenet of all major ethical theories, if not a fundamental assumption of morality itself. What is the fundamental tenet/assumption to which DesJardins refers?

The ethical basis for the consensus of a commitment to equal treatment for each individual, providing each person with equal economic opportunity

What’s the difference between discriminating and discriminating unethically?

Discrimination is the ability to make distinctions
Discriminating unethically is when the criteria used in making such discrimination are unethical or unfair

According to DesJardins, there are three types of preferential policy. What are they?

1)in the case of otherwise equally qualified candidates, give preferences to the previously disadvantaged candidate
2)identify members of previously disadvantaged groups in the pool of qualified applicants and given them preference in the hiring decision, even if there is another candidate, typically a white male, who is more qualified
3)simply require that members of disadvantaged groups be hired with only minimal consideration given to qualification

Which of these three types of preferential are most ethically problematic, and why?

The third type (to simply require that members of disadvantaged groups be hired with only minimal consideration given to qualifications) because with this third type the job qualifications basically don’t really matter

What are the two general arguments against preferential hiring?

1)the merit argument: claims that by ignoring or overriding qualifications, preferential policies violate the white male’s right to have hiring decisions based on merit
2)the equal respect argument: claims that preferential treatment violates the white male’s right to be treated w/ equal respect and given equal opportunity

What is the compensatory argument for preferential hiring?

Requires that individuals harmed by discriminatory hiring processes receive compensation for that harm

What three issues need to be resolved if one is to adequately address the compensatory argument for preferential hiring?

1)requires that the compensation be proportionate to the harms done
2)the party paying the compensate be responsible for the harm
3)the party receiving compensation be the party harmed

According to DesJardins, the employee’s right to due process can be defended on grounds of respect and fairness. Explain

An employee’s right to due process protects them from the abuse of authority in the workplace. When there is unjustified authority then there is simply power with one person imposing one’s will on another as a mere means to one’s own end. Thus this violates the autonomy of that individual and denies him the respect he deserves. Also, institutions that allow people to impose their will upon others w/o justification are fundamentally unfair and unjust.

How does DesJardins respond to the following claim: “One cannot hold marketing responsible for a given purchase because one cannot prove that it caused the purchase”?

DesJardins claims that if marketers believed that marketing was ineffective in influencing consumer choice then their selling to businesses would be fraud and they would undercut their own careers. Their service works or it doesn’t and if it does work and if marketing can and does influence consumer choice then marketing cannot disavow ethical responsibility for the consequences of those choices.

According to DesJardins, an increasingly diverse population in and out of the workforce creates challenges to business. Explain.

Differences among genders, ethnic groups, and cultures can create significant barriers to an efficient and peaceful workplace. The workplace is but a subset of the wider society and social concerns of equality and discrimination can be expected to appear w/in the workplace